Celebrate International Women's Day at the "39, Silence" art exhibition event hosted by International Programs. The beautiful works of Iranian artist Badri Valian will be on display. Reception 3/7 at 1pm, Artist Talk at 2:30pm.
About the Artist
Badri was born in Sharoud, a small quiet town in the foothills of the vast rugged Alborz mountains in Northern Iran. She studied art at the University of Mashad in Northeast Iran. Simultaneous with her art education, she kept active in sports and physical activities such as Volleyball, mountain climbing, bodybuilding, and Yoga.
She moved to California in 2013 and continued her pursuit of her artistic as well as athletic passions.
Her latest artistic creation, “39, Silence”, is a culmination of 39 years of life journey from small town, to the Himalayan Mountains, to Dubai, where she met her husband, and finally to California.
“39 Silence” illustrates the story of Badri's life from early childhood in Sharoud, Iran to Menlo Park California, combining her love for art and athletics and how these two seemingly distinct worlds meld together to form her universe.
About the Exhibit
“ 39, Silence “ is about Badri’s life experience for about 39 years .
In this project , she presents herself as a performance artist. She has combined a variety of mediums to express herself through the sounds, videos and colors on canvas.
Basically, she has been challenging herself by different physical activities in each painting. For instance, in one painting, “Childhood”, Badri is jumping up and down on trampoline. She keeps jumping until she runs out of breath and immediately she goes to her canvas and marks patterns, lines and very expressive abstract images. She keeps jumping on trampoline again and paints on the canvas for 39 times in a row.
She says: “ It took me almost a day to terminate the challenge. When I was done , I was really exhausted and overwhelmed BUT satisfied by painting. The more I moved forward, my marks and colors became very brief but meaningful and abstract. I was supposed to record all my movements with my camera and also to write down whatever which my mind was occupied with, because I wanted to discuss about each single memory with my video editor later that day to make sure he completely felt and understand whatever I felt. I also did not resist the unpredictable events if those came to happen on my painting . Like my neighbor's cat, Chusco, came to fresh colors on my canvas and crossed the canvas, and did mono print by her foot everywhere. So, I didn’t get a heart attack, but I kept his foot print as an amazing distractive patterns to remember that sometimes our life can be covered or influenced by non-planned events and we’d better not take it for granted.“
“39, Silence” consists of 5 images :
- Childhood (was challenged by trampoline)
- Lost in France (With Sprint)
- Roots (With Jumping Rope)
- Tsunami (Through Hand Standing)
- Downward Dog ( By Yoga Balance) Badri recently is so fascinated by women’s desires, capabilities and their stories. For her next project, "Coffee’s delicate smell in Damascus" she wants to add one more dimension to her 2D painting to something she calls: “conceptual sculpture."